Yaa Gyasi facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Yaa Gyasi
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| Born | 1989 (age 35–36) Mampong, Ghana |
| Education | Stanford University (BA) University of Iowa (MFA) |
| Notable works | Homegoing (2016), Transcendent Kingdom (2020) |
| Notable awards |
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Yaa Gyasi (born in 1989) is a talented Ghanaian American writer. She is known for her novels, especially her first book, Homegoing (2016), and her second, Transcendent Kingdom (2020). Her stories often explore themes like family history, how past events affect future generations, and what it means to be Black and African.
Gyasi has won many important awards for her writing. When she was just 26, she received the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for Best First Book. She also won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" authors in 2016, and earned the 2017 American Book Award. In 2020, she was honored with a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. Yaa Gyasi currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Contents
Growing Up and School
Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana. Her father, Kwaku Gyasi, is a French professor, and her mother, Sophia, is a nurse. Her family moved to the United States in 1991. This was when her father was finishing his advanced degree at Ohio State University.
The family lived in different states, including Illinois and Tennessee. From the age of 10, Gyasi grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. She remembers being a shy child. She felt very close to her brothers because they shared the experience of being young immigrant children in Alabama. Books became her "closest friends."
An early encouragement came from a certificate she received. It was signed by LeVar Burton for a story she wrote for the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest. When she was 17, attending Grissom High School, she read Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. This book inspired her to become a writer.
Yaa Gyasi went to Stanford University and earned a degree in English. Later, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. This is a famous creative writing program at the University of Iowa.
Her Writing Career
After finishing her studies at Stanford, Gyasi started writing her first novel, Homegoing. At the time, she was working at a technology company in San Francisco. In 2012, she was accepted into the University of Iowa's writing program. She then left her job to focus on writing full-time.
Homegoing: A Journey Through History
The idea for Homegoing came from a trip Gyasi took to Ghana in 2009. A special grant helped her research her first book. She visited her mother's family home in the Ashanti area of Kumasi. She also toured the Cape Coast Castle. This was a colonial trading fort where enslaved Africans were held before being sent on ships to the Americas.
This difficult history forms the background of the novel. The story begins in 18th-century Ghana with two half-sisters, Effia and Esi. Effia marries a British commander of Cape Coast Castle. Meanwhile, Esi is held captive in the castle's dungeons before being forced onto a slave ship. The book then follows the lives of Effia's and Esi's descendants. It covers seven generations, leading up to the present-day United States.
The novel shows how the effects of colonialism and slavery impacted each family member. It also explores historical events they lived through. These include conflicts between different Ghanaian groups, the start of cocoa farming in Ghana, and plantation slavery in the American South. It also covers forced labor after the Reconstruction era, and the civil rights movement in the US.
Gyasi finished Homegoing in 2015. Many publishers wanted to publish her book. She accepted a large advance from Knopf. The famous writer Ta-Nehisi Coates chose Homegoing for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award in 2016. The novel also won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first book, and the American Book Award.
Transcendent Kingdom: Exploring Family and Faith
In February 2020, Knopf published Gyasi's second book, Transcendent Kingdom. This novel features characters from an earlier short story Gyasi wrote in 2015 called "Inscape." Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of Gifty, a 28-year-old woman. The book uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to show her family's journey from Ghana to Alabama. It also explores her father leaving, and her mother's struggles with sadness after Gifty's brother dies young. The novel looks at how racism can lead to sadness and family problems.
Critics praised Transcendent Kingdom. Sara Collins of The Guardian called it a "profound follow-up to Homegoing." USA Today described it as "stealthily devastating." Other publications like The Vox, Chicago Review of Books, and The New Republic also gave it good reviews.
In 2021, Gyasi wrote a short story called "Bad Blood." It was included in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. The story is about a young Black mother who worries a lot about her health. This worry is shown as an effect of the long history of racism and unfair treatment in healthcare.
Yaa Gyasi's Inspirations
Gyasi's writing has also appeared in magazines like African American Review, Callaloo, Guernica, The Guardian, and Granta. She has mentioned several writers who inspire her. These include Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon), Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain), Edward P. Jones (Lost in the City), and Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth). In 2017, Forbes magazine included Gyasi on their "30 under 30 List."
Gyasi has also spoken about being widely recognized as a Black author. In March 2021, she wrote an article in The Guardian. She discussed how Homegoing became very popular again during the Black Lives Matter protests. She wrote that while books can challenge and change people, simply buying books by Black authors is not enough to fix centuries of harm.
Awards and Honors
- 2016: National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for Best First Book for Homegoing
- 2016: National Book Foundation's "5 under 35"
- 2017: American Book Award for Homegoing
- 2017: Granta Best of Young American Novelists
- 2017: PEN/Hemingway Award for Homegoing
- 2020: Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature, Vilcek Foundation
- 2020: Great Immigrants Award named by Carnegie Corporation of New York
- 2021: Women's Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for Transcendent Kingdom
- 2023: Royal Society of Literature International Writer
Her Books
- Homegoing (2016)
- Transcendent Kingdom (2020)
- "Bad Blood" in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021)
See also
In Spanish: Yaa Gyasi para niños
